


i am a stone under a stone under a stone

by rathalos



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: ....i think, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28698237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathalos/pseuds/rathalos
Summary: “You should be asleep,” he says, letting his voice stray to the edge of irritability.“I was,” Chrome says, standing awkwardly out in the hallway and eyeing his open door with something like surprise. “But I heard a noise…”“I fell out of bed,” Mukuro says truthfully, pretending the tremor in his voice is borne from lack of sleep. He chooses to omit the reason it had happened. “You can go now.”
Relationships: Chrome Dokuro & Rokudou Mukuro, Kokuyo Gang & Rokudou Mukuro
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	i am a stone under a stone under a stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Matrired](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrired/gifts).



> title from [niemand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgqZeTyU_k) by kompromat

Mukuro fights his way to the waking world in between ragged gasps and frantic clawing to kick his blankets off, to free himself of their restraining tangles, the folds of fabric that itch at his skin wrong.

He rolls out of bed disoriented and half-dreaming, hand scrambling around for the light switch. His fingernails scrape against the wall once, twice before he finds it.

The dim bulb in his room winks feebly to life, flickering all the while but still bringing Mukuro a small amount of comfort, though it’s just as soon drained away by the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

 _There’s nothing here_ , he tells himself quickly, reflexively.

The way his hand tightens on the doorframe until his knuckles go white from the stress would lead one to think Mukuro believes otherwise—he carefully shifts his gaze towards the floor, counting the cracks in the floorboards.

After all, out of sight…

“…Mukuro-san?”

Surprise sends a jolt through him, radiating from his chest, out to his extremities before he reins himself in and forces his posture to relax. He takes a breath. It’s just Chrome.

“You should be asleep,” he says, letting his voice stray to the edge of irritability.

“I was,” Chrome says, standing awkwardly out in the hallway and eyeing his open door with something like surprise. “But I heard a noise…”

“I fell out of bed,” Mukuro says truthfully, pretending the tremor in his voice is borne from lack of sleep. He chooses to omit the reason it had happened. “You can go now.”

Chrome mumbles something too quiet for Mukuro to parse. He loosens his grip on the doorway, and then clenches his fingers around it once again. There’s just a fleeting suspicion that his legs might give out, if he lets go just yet.

There’s something in the corner of his mind that hasn’t fully fled yet. It won’t stay within his dreams—his slumber is shackles, and _something_ yearns to be free. Terrors like these should be kept in the dark. Mukuro’s eyes flicker quickly towards the lightbulb.

“I don’t think I should,” Chrome says—repeats, possibly.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

Chrome nods, once, slowly. “It’s… n-not good for you to be alone.”

“Of course,” Mukuro sighs, trying to shake off the cold, oppressive feeling pressing down against his back. “And I suppose you’ll wake everyone else up now.”

“I might,” Chrome admits, looking unsure.

“…Do whatever you want,” Mukuro says. “I don’t…”

He does, actually; he wants to tell her to leave him alone and to make sure everyone _else_ leaves him alone, but complete sentences are… exceedingly difficult, at the moment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Chrome asks, turning and leading him down the hallway. She raps briefly on the doors of the occupied bedrooms as she passes.

“Not at all.”

It’s funny. Mukuro hates being coddled. But for some reason, Chrome’s soft, slow words don’t set off that itch in the back of his head. Maybe it’s just hard to feel anything after the whiteout of terror he just experienced.

He grits his teeth.

Try not to think about it.

She sits him down on one of the ratty couches in the big room, and retreats down the hall to make sure the others are coming. Mukuro crosses his arms, trying to steady his breathing. Chrome had neglected to turn on any sort of light, and bleak shafts of moonlight fall onto the concrete floor. Mukuro sticks his hand out, expression blank as the glow of the beam illuminates his fingers.

They’re shaking. Mukuro balls his hand into a fist, retracts it back towards himself.

“Mukuro-san! I heard you fell out of bed, byon!” In usual fashion, Ken immediately leaps and crashes into him, startling Mukuro enough that he physically flinches. “Oh. Sorry. Are you injured, byon?”

“He’s okay, physically,” Chrome says, voice subdued. “I think so, at least…”

“He better be,” M.M. says, pulling no punches. It irritates Mukuro to discover that her unchanging attitude actually—dare he say—comforts him. She’s a thorn in his side. He harbors _no_ affection for her. But at least she’s the only one being normal about this whole thing. “Although, on second thought, it’d really piss me off if you woke me up for no reason. Hey. What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” Mukuro says firmly, nearly laughing at how untrue that is. But he suspects “Chrome’s a worrywart.”

“As long as we’re up, I’ll make tea,” Chikusa inputs, shuffling off to their kitchen. Ever the practical one. What would they all do without tea?

“And I’ll check for injuries!” Ken volunteers, grabbing Mukuro’s arm.

“Ken,” Mukuro reprimands, voice coming out a little stronger, a little more steady than he expects. “What if that arm had been injured?”

Ken pauses, sheepishly letting go. “Oh, I-I didn’t think of that, byon…”

“Of course you didn’t,” M.M. says. “Anyways, Chrome says he isn’t injured so he probably isn’t. Can I go now?”

“No,” Fran says, latching onto her like a barnacle. “Watch this.”

The next second, Mukuro’s vision goes completely dark. He stiffens, wild panic tearing through his mind—a beast in the dark—disorienting all his senses—his mist burns to life in his hand, almost ready to take the shape of a trident—but then a soft, heavy weight falls onto his shoulders and he realizes it’s a _blanket,_ of all things.

And he knows exactly who this illusion belongs to.

“Fran,” Mukuro says, trying not to let his exhaustion show in his voice.

“Yeah, master?” Fran says. Mukuro hears a rustling noise, and then a tiny pair of hands wrap around his waist. “Wow, you’re cold. Kind of hate that.”

Mukuro sighs. It’s no use talking to him. He grabs a fistful of blanket and pulls it back until a wave of fresh air hits his face, and he sticks his head out of the comforter Fran had conjured.

Before long, he’s joined by M.M., Chrome, and Ken, who had all been caught in Fran’s blanket-net. Fran himself seems uninterested in coming up for air, instead snuggling up against Mukuro, complaining about his body temperature all the while.

“Hey! Don’t insult Mukuro-san, byon! His body temperature is the perfect—”

“Shut _up_ ,” M.M. begs. “It’s too early, late, _whatever_ , for your hero-worship.”

“Um…”

“Hey, I’m warming him up,” Fran says, and then promptly bites Mukuro.

Mukuro lets out a hiss of annoyance, pushing Fran away by the forehead. “Chrome, M.M., get a handle on your child before I do something I’ll regret.”

M.M. crawls over Ken, dislodging the blanket so it’s mostly wrapped around their collective shoulders now, and drags Fran away by the back of the collar.

“Call him my kid again and I’ll gut you,” she warns, handing Fran off to Chrome who immediately envelops him in her arms.

Mukuro’s eye twitches. He barely even has time to be properly afraid; looking after these buffoons is so attention-consuming that it pushes his own problems to the very back of his mind, to that fine line between forgetfulness and painful awareness.

Still—he finds he’s only relaxed incrementally. There’s yet a rigid set to his spine and a fine trembling in his fingers when Chikusa returns with mugs of tea on a wide tray. He sets the thing down on a rickety end table and surveys the blanket (and the five of them trapped inside it) with a look of faint revulsion on his face.

“Not gonna join us?” Fran asks, looking extremely judgemental.

“…I think not,” Chikusa says, grabbing a mug off the tray and handing it to Mukuro. Noticeably, he does this for no one else before grabbing his own mug and sitting on a stiff, dusty recliner opposite of them.

…The professor is right. This place _does_ need a touch-up.

The blanket amalgam shifts yet again, a monstrous lumpy mass, as Ken frees himself to grab some tea. “Where’s the sugar, byon?”

Chikusa gives him an unimpressed look. “In the kitchen. I thought that would be obvious.”

“Well, why didn’t ya bring it out?”

“My apologies, truly. I neglected to account for your childish tastes.”

“Hey!” M.M. says indignantly, escaping Fran’s hell blanket to swat Chikusa over the head. He stares at her balefully. “Sugar’s good. Stop being such a jerk.”

“Says you,” Fran mutters.

Ken makes a noise of affront. “Says _both_ of you! You’re all terrible, byon!”

M.M.’s next response is in a sharply rising tone, signaling the argument she’s about to spark. This happens everyday. It’s ordinary. He should be used to it, but…

Mukuro swallows.

It’s too fast for him.

“Chrome.”

“Hm?” Chrome says, wrapping the end of the blanket around herself and Fran. She seems uninterested in the tea, and even less so in the conflict Ken, Chikusa, and M.M. are currently embroiling themselves in.

“Chrome,” Mukuro repeats, infuriatingly unable to say anything else. His voice wants to shake, but he doesn’t let it. The moon is dim—cloud cover must have moved in, and the lights still aren’t on. “Chrome.”

Fran glances at him sideways, corner of his mouth tilted downwards in a rare expression of confusion. “Um, master? Think you need to use your words a little.”

The mug in his hand is hot, bordering just this side of painful. He has nowhere to put it.

Fran’s poke at him barely registers—just the squabble in front of him growing rowdier by the minute, Chrome’s wide round eyes staring at him, something in between concern and fright filling out her expression, and the texture of the comforter on his bare arms. It’s stifling.

“Fran, go fight with the others,” Chrome urges, nudging him off the couch. Fran seems happy enough to throw himself into the fray, immediately shouting something that Mukuro can’t quite process. Whether that’s Fran purposefully slurring his words or if Mukuro’s really this out of it, he can’t tell. “Mukuro-san?”

He raises the hand that isn’t holding his tea. “I—I need—”

Chrome reaches out, until her fingers are poised in front of his, hovering just a few centimeters away. Mukuro makes no move to stop her, and she gently takes his hand, pulling him to his feet.

“Mukuro-san’s fine,” she announces to the room at large. Her words are lost in the wall of noise, distorted and unintelligible words coming off of the rest of the group. In a lower voice, she adds, “Come on, I don’t think they’ll care. Um… I-I mean, of course they care, but…”

Mukuro nods. Chrome sighs in apparent relief, and the two of them slip out of the room unnoticed.

“I’m sorry,” Chrome apologizes, once they’re back in his room. Thankfully, the light seems to have sorted out whatever issues it had earlier and is going steady now.

Mukuro releases Chrome’s hand, sitting on his bed and letting his head thunk back against the wall. He doesn’t speak.

“I don’t th-think I should have w-woken, um, woken them up,” Chrome continues.

If he strains his ears, he can still make out the sounds of their argument echoing down the hallway. Mukuro shakes his head, forcing the words to come. “It helped.”

Chrome relaxes a little, nodding hesitantly. “Then… I’m glad. But I still should have done something to prevent—”

“Stop,” Mukuro says, hating that the tone of his voices comes across as more of a plea than a command. “It wasn’t… you didn’t… have to do anything.” Breathe. “It wasn’t their fault. Yours either. It… helped.”

“Okay,” Chrome says, nervously perching on the end of the bed. “Do you n-need anything? Should I stay?”

Mukuro hesitates. Closes his eyes, gives himself a moment. “I’ll rejoin the others.”

“But—”

“I just need a moment,” Mukuro says, frowning when a look of discontent briefly flashes over Chrome’s face. “…I should be the one…”

Mukuro’s words fail.

Chrome doesn’t ask for any further response.

As they sit together, he keeps an ear on the steadily-decreasing volume of the spat in the big room and the other on the soft cadence of Chrome’s steady breathing. He uses that rhythm to measure time, counts breaths and heartbeats and clenches and unclenches his fist until he feels like he’s going to go numb from the repetition, inhales and exhales and tries to find some kind of measure he can lose himself in because if he keeps thinking about it he’s going to…

…runs circles inside his own mind, footsteps thumping to the spiraling chaos of their voices, round and round and _round_ and it makes…

…a night without stars, cold metal at his back and friction burns where he’s wearing away the…

…the distinct beat of a crow’s wing, _whuff whuff whuff_ as they chase each other around in the sky, picking _whuff whuff whuff_ at the tail-feathers of a russet…

…he’s going to lose himself.

At long last, after what feels like a lifetime (though Mukuro should know lifetimes are much, _much_ more agonizing than this), he stands. Chrome issues a small surprised hum, getting to her feet as well.

“I’m…”

Probably not ready, not _really._

But he can’t stand this anymore, so he takes on last deep breath before schooling his features and returning to the big room.

M.M. sulks on her green armchair, Ken and Chikusa lie tangled up in each other, limb over limb on Fran’s blanket—out cold, Mukuro suspects—and Fran is finishing off all the tea on the tray. They both look at him when he enters, though M.M.’s gaze is centered more on Chrome than anyone else.

Fran walks up to him, long shirt sleeves hanging down so far they’re almost touching the floor. Is that the professor’s? Mukuro sighs. Doesn’t matter anymore; once Fran gets his hands on something, it’s his forever, on pain of death (or recurring, persistent nightmares).

“I guess,” M.M. starts, looking like the words are being physically ripped from her, “we owe you an… ugh, an _apology_. It’s possible that we, and by ‘we’ I mean _those_ two knuckleheads, might have taken it too far. Mmmaybe.”

To be honest, it’s a shit apology; however, Mukuro can’t say any sorries he’s said have even come close to approaching the level of sincerity M.M.’s holds, so he can’t fault her for it.

“I don’t care,” Mukuro says simply. Whether she finds forgiveness in his words is up to her.

He sits down next to Ken and Chikusa, sinking into the couch and wincing when one of the springs jabs him in the leg. That’s right. They don’t even have couch cushions here. It takes a few seconds of fiddling to get into a position where it no longer sticks out of the thin piece of fabric covering the mess of springs, and by then M.M. has condescended to sit herself on the far end of the couch.

“Well, good,” she responds, crossing her arms and settling in. Chrome takes a seat next to her, and Fran, predictably, lies down across the both of them.

Has the couch always been this long?

Mukuro scrutinizes it carefully.

…Chrome’s work, definitely.

Despite himself, he smiles.

The exhaustion he feels is deep-set, and won’t go away with just a short few hours of sleep (he finds it difficult to sleep past dawn), but he reclines his head anyways.

“Goodnight,” Chrome says.

There’s a soft rushing sound like wind in his ears (nothing like the feathery, almost musical vibrating thump of a raven in flight) and soon enough another thick comforter is weighing Mukuro down, though this one is much more welcome than the one Fran had conjured.

“Mmh,” Mukuro acknowledges, letting his eyes slip shut. “…Thank you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ [takeshiyamamoto](https://takeshiyamamoto.tumblr.com)


End file.
